Currently, for a smart terminal such as a mobile phone, a mode of the mobile phone is mainly manually selected by a user on the mobile phone. Once a mode is selected, each person that uses this mobile phone obtains a same permission and views same content unless the user changes the mode of the mobile phone again. However, as the mobile phone may often need to be lent to others for use, this manner, of the prior art, in which a mode is relatively fixed once selected is unfavorable for protecting privacy content that is stored by the user in the mobile phone.